OMNY
OMNY is a contactless fare payment system, currently being implemented for use on public transit in the New York metropolitan area. OMNY can currently be used to pay fares at all New York City Subway and Staten Island Railway stations, on all MTA buses, AirTrain JFK, Metro North's Hudson Rail Link, the Roosevelt Island Tram, Bee-Line buses, and NICE buses. OMNY will also expand beyond the current scope of the MetroCard to include the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad.
The MetroCard, a magnetic stripe card, was first introduced in 1993 and was used to pay fares on MTA subways and buses, as well as on other networks such as the PATH train.
In 1994 the MTA formed the MetroCard Company, a venture to explore development of a joint transit/financial services payment card. The technology and business relationships weren’t ready, but the effort started to lay the foundation for thinking about fare systems as part of open-loop financial payment systems.
In 2000, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey sponsored a feasibility study for a contactless regional fare card, which was conducted by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center of the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2001, the Port Authority Board of Commissioners approved a new fare system for the Port Authority Trans Hudson, which was seen as a first step towards an integrated regional fare payment system. Two limited contactless-payment trials were conducted around the New York City area in 2006 and in 2010. However, formal planning for a full replacement of the MetroCard did not start until 2016.
The OMNY system is designed by Cubic Transportation Systems, using technology licensed from Transport for London's Oyster card. The system accepts payments through contactless bank cards and mobile payments as well as physical OMNY cards. OMNY began its public rollout in May 2019, with the first readers installed at select subway stations and on buses in Staten Island. The Staten Island Railway received OMNY readers in December 2019, and rollout on the New York City Subway and on MTA buses was completed on December 31, 2020.
The MTA began offering OMNY contactless cards on October 1, 2021, and introduced fare capping on February 28, 2022. Reduced-fare customers were allowed to use OMNY starting in June 2022 using their own debit or credit cards which must be registered with OMNY. Reduced Fare OMNY cards were expected to be issued in late 2023, but were not rolled out until December 2024. Another form of Reduced Fare OMNY cards, given to low income residents through the Fair Fares program, became available in February 2025. Full deployment to other New York City-area transit systems had been expected by 2023 but has been delayed. The phasing out of the MetroCard—originally expected in 2023—has been delayed indefinitely, but sales and distribution of the MetroCard ended on December 31, 2025.
Predecessors
s had been used for fare payment in New York City since 1953. Starting in 1992, they were replaced by MetroCards made by Cubic Transportation Systems, which used magnetic stripes to encode the fare payment. By 2003, tokens had been completely phased out.MasterCard and Citibank funded a trial of contactless payments, branded as PayPass. The trial was conducted at 25 subway stations, mostly on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, beginning in July 2006. The trial was limited to select Citibank cardholders, but it proved popular enough to be extended past its original end date of December 2006.
In light of the success of the first contactless payment trial in 2006, another trial was conducted from June to November 2010. The 2010 trial initially only supported MasterCard-branded cards, expanding to Visa PayWave cards in August. The 2010 trial eventually expanded to include multiple Manhattan bus routes, two New Jersey Transit bus routes, and most PATH stations.
Proposal
In 2016, the MTA announced that it would begin designing a new contactless fare payment system to replace the MetroCard. The replacement system was initially planned for partial implementation in 2018 and full implementation by 2022. In October 2017, the MTA started installing eTix-compatible electronic ticketing turnstiles in 14 stations in Manhattan. The eTix system, already used on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, allows passengers to pay their fares using their phones. The system would originally be for MTA employees only.On October 23, 2017, it was announced that the MetroCard would be phased out and replaced by a contactless fare payment system also by Cubic, with fare payment being made using Android Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, debit/credit cards with near-field communication enabled, or radio-frequency identification cards. The announcement called for a phased rollout, culminating in the discontinuation of the MetroCard by 2023. The payment system would use technology licensed from Transport for London's Oyster card. Critics responded to the proposals with concerns about security and privacy, highlighting a 2016 security breach of fare systems in San Francisco.
Implementation
In June 2018, the MTA revised the timeline for implementation of the then-unnamed new payment system. The first stage of implementation would take place in May 2019. In the second stage, all subway stations would receive OMNY readers by October 2020, in preparation for the third stage, which involved the launch of a prepaid OMNY card by February 2021. The fourth stage involved the installation of OMNY vending machines by March 2022, and the MetroCard would be discontinued in 2023. Installation of OMNY vending machines in stations would be pushed back to the summer of 2023, with the discontinuation of MetroCards cancelled as further delays arise with rollout on regional rail and affiliate agencies.Initially, there were disagreements about what the payment system should be called; some executives wanted a "traditional" name that resembled the MetroCard's name, while others wanted more unusual names. Possible names included "MetroTap", "Tony", "Liberty" and "Pretzel". The name "OMNY" was eventually chosen as being "modern and universal". The OMNY name was announced in February 2019. "OMNY" is an acronym for "One Metro New York", intended to signify its eventual broad acceptance across the New York metropolitan area. However, goals for broad acceptance have since been hampered, with PATH and NJ Transit unwilling to install OMNY, instead pursuing similar independent systems which would not be compatible with it.
An internal trial launched in March 2019, involving over 1,100 MTA employees and 300 other participants. Over 1,200 readers were installed in subway stations and buses for the public trial, and the OMNY.info website was created. Weeks before the beginning of the public launch, $85.4 million had been spent on the project, out of a total budget of $644.7 million. The budget had risen to $677 million by June 2020 and to $732 million by November 2020. The budget was $772 million by June 2021.
Buses and rapid transit
At a presentation in May 2019, the MTA's Capital Program Oversight Committee specified the following items to be implemented at an unspecified future date: launch a mobile app, allow customers to pay with OMNY Cards on Access-a-Ride paratransit vehicles, and add OMNY readers on Select Bus Service buses to support all-door boarding. However, the committee expressed concerns that some bank cards would not be accepted, and that OMNY transactions could take longer than MetroCard transactions, increasing crowding at turnstiles. All-door boarding at Select Bus Service routes with OMNY began on July 20, 2020.Rollout
OMNY launched to the public on May 31, 2019, on Staten Island buses and at 16 subway stations. Turnstiles with OMNY readers displayed one of 11 screens, based on whether the OMNY payment was successful and whether the readers were functioning properly. At first, OMNY only supported single-ride fares paid with contactless bank cards; mobile payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay were also accepted, and free transfers between OMNY-enabled routes were available with the same transfer restrictions placed upon the MetroCard. In June and July 2019, Mastercard offered "Fareback Fridays" to promote the system, where it would refund up to two rides made using OMNY on Fridays. The OMNY system reached one million uses within its first 10 weeks and two million uses within 16 weeks. On one day in June, 18,000 taps were recorded from bank cards issued in 82 countries.In November 2019, the MTA announced its first expansion. Over the following month, 48 additional stations would be outfitted with OMNY readers the following month, thereby bringing the system to all five boroughs, and by January 2020 the system would then be expanded to Manhattan bus routes. Furthermore, the MTA would begin launching pilot programs on Select Bus Service, the city's bus rapid transit system, and add self-service features. OMNY readers were installed at the rear doors of buses. By then, over three million riders with bank cards from 111 countries had used OMNY. According to an internal MTA report, these riders had used over 460,000 unique payment methods between them, or about 2,000 new payment methods per day.
With the implementation of OMNY on the Staten Island Railway in December 2019, public transit in Staten Island became fully OMNY-compatible. The next month, MTA officials announced that OMNY had seen its five millionth use, and also that it would expand to 60 more subway stations by the end of the month. In addition, the MTA launched a marketing campaign for OMNY. After another expansion the next month, there were over 180 OMNY-equipped stations and OMNY had been used over 7 million times. This grew to 10 million uses by the time yet another expansion was announced in March.
No new OMNY installations were added from March to June 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. The pandemic delayed the target date for which OMNY would be implemented at all subway stations and MTA bus routes, which was pushed back from October to December 2020. OMNY installation in Manhattan was completed in July 2020. By that September, two-thirds of subway stations were OMNY-equipped; this included all stations in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, as well as buses in the latter two boroughs. In November 2020, OMNY readers were installed at AutoGates, where disabled riders could enter and exit the system., OMNY had been rolled out to 458 subway stations, representing 97% of the total, and OMNY had been used 30 million times. On December 31, 2020, the MTA announced that OMNY was active on all MTA buses and at all subway stations, after the last OMNY readers were activated at Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum station.